If you're game for risking a brick, don't mind some questionable practices and are itching for Ice Cream Sandwich on your Droid RAZR, you'll want to pay attention here. A potential Ice Cream Sandwich OTA is sitting pretty on Motorola's staging server, waiting for testers to download, flash and test. Normally, folks like you and me can't get to those staging servers (Moto Matt has to get you hooked up) but there's a method floating around that gives you access, if you're into that sort of thing. Using that method, and a completely stock .173 CDMA RAZR you can download the official release candidate of Ice Cream Sandwich for your Droid RAZR. Note -- this is CDMA only, as in not GSM -- don't try it, it won't work. We're not going to lay out the method, but yalkowni over at XDA has it all worked out for ya. Hit the link and have a look.

I'm here to report this type of news, whether I approve of it or not. I've no problem with risky procedures that will brink your phone, in fact I've bricked a few of my own. But I wouldn't do this if I had a RAZR. Yes, yes, Blur sucks (though we haven't really seen the new ICS Blur yet) and Moto really should provide a method to unlock the bootloader on phone computer hardware users paid good money for, but I draw the line at network shenanigans. Motorola has always been a little loose with their soak tests, and aren't too concerned about keeping things a secret. Now that this method has been made public, and 20,000 or so people are hitting the staging server, that may very well change.

If rumors hold true, we'll see ICS for the RAZR in a couple days, and we won't judge if you go on and give this a try. Our job is to tell you as much as we can.

Reader comments

This method has been around for a while. Used it a lot on.my bionic. But as mentioned if u don't have a safety net your going to b sol. Us bionic users learned this lesson even a rsd flash could get us back on the path. This not like flashing a custom rom.

I have used the method their talking about. It did NOT come from XDA, the original method was posted at www.droidrzr.com and then XDA tried to take credit for it. It does work and I am running ICS 4.0.3 rooted on a Droid Razr. Huzzah!

i dont think "XDA" is taking credit, its just a forum that someone posted on, its not like this is some hacker group that released a tool for this. Anyone can register and post there, just like here. I dont think anyone cares where it came from first, as long as it works.

Jerry "the author" obviously doesn't have a RAZR. This method and update was revealed on Droidrzr.com NOT XDA!!!!! Also, you can fastboot back to Gingerbread from this ICS update with NO ISSUES! Learn your damn facts before you post that someones method is "sketchy." I was the 3rd person to have this update and have it rooted, XDA had nothing to do with this!

Obviously people do care where it came from. The guy that made that post on XDA didn't give credit to the actual people that figured out how to install the update properly and keep root as well. He posted it as if he came up with it on his own. That is why people are upset about it. If you came up with some cool thing, then found out someone stole the idea from you and posted it as their own, then began getting recognized for it, you would be upset too. Myself and about 5 or 6 others spent hours and hours and hours coming up with this method only to have someone else get the credit. Yeah we're upset, we have every right to be.

But he is the one smart enough to write out the instructions, and send a link to all the top tier Android blogs. I'd have been happy to point people your way had you done the same. Remember us next time you come up with something.

And by "sketchy" I meant using cheesecake. You know Moto isn't going to be happy now that thousands of people are trying it. I don't care if it bricks phones -- that's part of the game sometimes. Of course, you also could have gathered that from reading the post.

Yes, he was smart in the sense of shrewd, and yet not smart to not give credit where credit was due. I don't have a dog in this fight but I do see why people would be a bit annoyed by the way this has developed.

This was done back in June of last year already for the Atrix 4G. It's how they discovered the bootloader unlock for the international versions after the AT&T unlock was found in a leaked Gingerbread SBF a few weeks before the official release from Motorola. It's also how they discovered that the official release would not have the unlockable bootloader from the test releases. The unlockable bootloader was extracted from the test SBF and made flashable via RSD.

I had gone camping for a week only to come back and find out that the bootloader was cracked and there were Gingerbread roms ready for download. It was a busy weekend, and my camping gear sat around the apartment for a few days before I got around to putting it away.